India to someone who lives in Lahore is like Queens to someone who lives in Lower Manhattan - it's not far away, and yet it doesn't exist.
Mohsin HamidOnly in novels can we take another human being into our head and create something jointly.
Mohsin HamidSufi poetry is, in a sense, self-help poetry about how to live a decent life, how to deal with your mortality.
Mohsin HamidI commit her to memory. When I'm alone, I feel a strange yearning, the hunger of a man fasting not because he believes but because he's ashamed. Not the cleansing hunger of the devout, but the feverish hunger of the hypocrite. I let her go every evening only because there's nothing I can do to stop her.
Mohsin HamidIn a world of intrusive technology, we must engage in a kind of struggle if we wish to sustain moments of solitude. E-reading opens the door to distraction. It invites connectivity and clicking and purchasing. The closed network of a printed book, on the other hand, seems to offer greater serenity. It harks back to a pre-jacked-in age. Cloth, paper, ink: For these read helmet, cuirass, shield. They afford a degree of protection and make possible a less intermediated, less fractured experience. They guard our aloneness. That is why I love them, and why I read printed books still.
Mohsin Hamid